building bestsellers

At The Bent Agency, we work with authors to map the publishing career of their dreams and work with them to make it a reality. We pay careful attention to every detail, from the terms of a first contract, editorial work and cover design, to the publisher's marketing and publicity plan, royalties and sales figures. We offer the kind of representation that can only be born of years of agent experience in the atmosphere of a smaller boutique firm where every client gets our combined and total focus.

We pride ourselves on nurturing and discovering authors whom we can help propel to the top of their category. We have represented over 30 New York Times bestselling titles, with many more on USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and other regional lists.

Focus on Rights and Marketing

We pride ourselves on representing foreign rights with our own in-house agent to provide additional streams of revenue for our authors. We've made almost a thousand foreign rights deals since opening our doors in 2009 because we offer a dedicated team selling rights around the world for our select list of clients. We've also made a significant number of film/television deals for our clients. We work with agents from a wide range of Hollywood agencies, pairing each author with the book-to-film specialist that is exactly right for them. In this way we are able to make deals for the kinds of books that often don't get Hollywood representation - literary novels, essay collections, paperback original fiction.

As the electronic marketplace evolves, we work with our clients and their publishers to navigate emerging multimedia, enhanced e-books, apps, and digital opportunities. We offer e-pubbing representation, helping clients get back the rights to backlist titles as well as e-pub brand new works that didn't find a traditional home or are better suited to the e-pub format.

Our job doesn't end when we sell the book. Using our intimate knowledge of marketing and online expertise, we advise our clients on how to work with publishers to best market their books. Our Twitter feeds (a total of almost 100,000 followers), Pinterest pages, and our blog BENT ON BOOKS are tremendous platforms to promote our clients' books, news, contests, highlights and new ventures.

Decades of Experience

The Bent Agency is the home of ten agents: Nicola Barr, Jenny Bent, John Bowers, Victoria Cappello, Gemma Cooper, Heather Flaherty, Louise Fury, Molly Ker Hawn, Sarah Manning, and Beth Phelan. Together we represent 80 years of experience in the publishing industry, with backgrounds in editorial, marketing, and subsidiary rights. Our list is diverse, which means we represent what we love, including writers of history, humor, lifestyle, inspiration, memoir, literary fiction, children's and commercial fiction. For more on our agents, visit our Agents page.

Reputation

The Bent Agency has a top-notch reputation among both authors and publishers. We're known for our work ethic, for our responsiveness, for the quality of our client list and for the results we achieve. We are passionate about our clients and love the work we do on their behalf.